Master of Malt launches oldest & most expensive $1mil whiskey

Master of Malt, a British online spirits retailer, has launched the oldest and most expensive bottle of Scotch whiskey. The newly launched whiskey is 105 years old, distilled on 17 February 1906 at the Aisla T’Orten distillery in the Highlands.

A catastrophic fire destroyed the buildings after just one day of operation, though a single ceremonial cask survived intact. The cask, a sherry butt, has spent the majority of the past century in the basement of Aberdeen-based historian, Allie Sisell.

Sisell contacted Master of Malt in 2010, and sold the cask for an undisclosed sum later in the year. The whisky was bottled in early 2011 after 105 years in cask.

Master of Malt’s sales director Ben Ellefsen said the company hopes that the lucky buyer of this whisky will enjoy and savour it, rather than let it languish in a presentation case.

“As with all our bottlings, from our 8 year old Blend right the way through to our 50 year old Speyside Single Malt, we’ve left out the extra cost incurred by fancy packaging,” Ellefsen said.

“The fact that this whisky is on sale for almost a million pounds is a direct reflection of its unique provenance, and the cost of the construction of the distillery in the early part of the twentieth century in order to produce, sadly, just one bottle of unique spirit.”

The spirit, which was discovered 8 months ago by a Scottish historian, has been launched with a price tag of GBP870,000 (approx $1,419,144), making it the most expensive spirit in history.